Night Strike wrote:So why should everything be coded into the site instead of controlled by the users? I don't understand the necessity.

I think there is a misunderstanding here. I'm not saying it shouldn't be controlled by the users!I think it should absolutely stay controlled by the users, but on a special tournament platform. This to give tournaments a more professional approach. The forums work, but are basic. Maybe if you click on the spoiler tab in my first post, it will get more clear to you.I indeed did suggest autmating bracket tournaments, but I think I should rethink this idea. The comments above did make it clear that automating a tournament, would be too easy and no honor should be given to the organizer, which makes it pointless for organizing. (except if you want to play in a specific bracket tournament, but if everyone should make his own automated tournament, there would be too many and the whole concept would fail...)

A special platform could hold more tournament features then the current forum setup.A couple examples: Tournament statistics (active and completed tournament overview), subscribe to a tournament by clicking a button, better overview on the tournament you are organizing.

P4Ssoa wrote:A special platform could hold more tournament features then the current forum setup.

Incorrect. No single system could be coded to provide the variety of tournaments that posting them in the forum allows. Currently, an organizer is limited by only what they choose to deal with, excluding a few specific rules. There are some features that can be included and will be over time, but I don't see the need to code the system to do the work for you. "Professional" just means the site does the work instead of the organizer. CC Tournaments are designed to be user-driven content, not site-driven.

P4Ssoa wrote:A special platform could hold more tournament features then the current forum setup.

Incorrect. No single system could be coded to provide the variety of tournaments that posting them in the forum allows. Currently, an organizer is limited by only what they choose to deal with, excluding a few specific rules. There are some features that can be included and will be over time, but I don't see the need to code the system to do the work for you. "Professional" just means the site does the work instead of the organizer. CC Tournaments are designed to be user-driven content, not site-driven.

I agree with NS that there is a lot more creativity in the tournaments section because you have to do the work manually. However, I would like to see a bit of automation (i.e. players can click "Join" instead of posting in a thread, TO's can setup simple themed tournaments and mass-create games for the same group of players (i.e. I have 6 players together per round, each of them has chosen a "home" game configuration (map, settings, etc) and they all play all 6 games against each other), winner "reporting" (i.e. you can go in and look at Round X and see who won which games that round)). I do not like the idea of fully automated tournaments though, on occasion they are nice (such as the Conquer Cup), but having them all automated would de-value the whole of Tournaments. Of course, before any of these changes are made, I will get feedback from the TO's to see exactly what they want/need from such an update.

I think there is a real misunderstanding here though! I do not want tournaments to be fully automated. You are very right to say that the way things currently are creates a lot of space for creativity. I don't want to change this. The current topic system shouldn't disappear in my opinion. However, I do think some things can be improved.

The 'platform' I'm talking about gives a lot of overview and it also leaves space for future improvements.This platform could still be linked with the forum topic. The options I suggested when you would click create tournament are mainly for when players want to join a tournament.If you create a list with all tournaments, with a button to join a tournament automatically, you would want to know several things.A) Tournament name (this is how your tournament will show up on the list.)B) Amount of players and reserves (if filled, the tournament will disappear automatically from the 'Join tournament' listC) Team games or single player (in case of team games, you will need to invite teammates before you can join the tournament)D) Restrictions. (don't meet the requiremens? Then you are not able to click the 'Join tournament' button.E) Player info required before joining? (This text will pop up when someone clicks the join button. Do you need to give up a certain map? A certain character name? Maybe settings for the games you'll play? You can ask your players this here, and when they click the join button, they will be asked to fill in what you ask them.F) Tournament information = the content of the current forum topic! After creating the tournament, this info will be shown when you click on a tournament on the join page. Also when you create a tournament, a forum topic (exactly like we have now) will be created and this will be the content. The forum topic title will be the name of your tournament.

Tournament organizers will still do everything manually! My initial idea was to include an automation for bracket tournaments, but like people wrote before, this won't be a good idea.

The first goal of my suggestion is to create space and overview. After this, other improvements can be made, like automatition for joining a tournament, Mass create games, winner reporting.

Ps: Greenoaks, if you had an old nokia 3310, (the bastard almost never breaks.) you will never have that shiny iPhone then?

P4Ssoa wrote:Ps: Greenoaks, if you had an old nokia 3310, (the bastard almost never breaks.) you will never have that shiny iPhone then?

haha, i have a Samsung. one of those slide ones. i have dropped it so many times and it bounces, not breaks like a shiny iPhone.

my kids think i'm weird because there is no touchscreen, no internet, no megapixal camera. the thing is it does what it is suppose to do (phone calls, txt msgs & my morning alarm) and it doesn't matter what i do - i can't break it.

that's what our tournament system is like. reliable. day after day.

your mega-overhaul will fail P4Ssoa. we TO's need reliable. we need functional, no matter what crazy concept we envisage (some tweaks would be nice but NS already has a list of those for us). what we need is a sandbox to allow us to be creative. we have that.

If you look at the whole concept, it doesn't need to be inreliable or afunctional. The sandbox concept doesn't need to change.(Maybe I do want to get rid of the box, but I'd like to create a desert instead, where the same creativity is possible, but with room for improvement!)I want to make it possible to grow and improve, and the foundations, like they have been should not change. It can (and maybe even should) still be forum based. I wish I could code a website, so I could create the layout and show you a preview.

Every tournament would still have it's forum topic. The topic would be created when you create a tournament. (automatically, as the topic title is the tournament title and the first post content is the content of tournament information)Every TO can still make a tournament the way he wants. There should be room for this. The concept I have in mind should not block any creativity. That would be very bad, and we really don't want that.

Maybe I am trying to make a world changing crusade, and I know 99% of the time, trying something like this is useless. I am just convinced that this would be a revolution for tournaments on this website, and that's worth the other 1%.

Currently when tournaments are entered into the database, they are checked to make sure the tournament meets the minimum requirements. Your system removes that check.

You're to the point that you may be making it too easy for players to join tournaments. Going to the forum at least requires enough effort that most people will play in the tournament without disappearing. If all you have to do is click a button to join, then you're probably going to have more people who won't actually join their games.

Night Strike wrote:You're to the point that you may be making it too easy for players to join tournaments. Going to the forum at least requires enough effort that most people will play in the tournament without disappearing. If all you have to do is click a button to join, then you're probably going to have more people who won't actually join their games.

For me personally, this is the biggest argument against any automated join system for tournaments. I know blake mentioned earlier that he'd like to see a "Join" button option, but I'd be very much against that for the reasons Night Strike just laid out.

Night Strike wrote:You're to the point that you may be making it too easy for players to join tournaments. Going to the forum at least requires enough effort that most people will play in the tournament without disappearing. If all you have to do is click a button to join, then you're probably going to have more people who won't actually join their games.

For me personally, this is the biggest argument against any automated join system for tournaments. I know blake mentioned earlier that he'd like to see a "Join" button option, but I'd be very much against that for the reasons Night Strike just laid out.

i have already expressed my opposition against it to.

if someone is incapable of entering the thread to post 'they're in' then they likely won't have read the rules. i don't need that headache.

general cod wrote:Good points for and against - It's good to discuss these and other topics as this will only to help improve players experiences. 'If it isn't broke why fix it' is my weak comment to add

that's not a weak comment, it's actually a good rule.

we have a limited amount of resources to make changes and many, many changes that could be made. pointing out that things are fine as they are is quite reasonable, and helpful to determine where those limited resources could be deployed.

P4Ssoa wrote:I agree, that's something to think about. But could requirements for joining not partially solve this problem?

Those same requirements for joining could actually be the cause of why the tournament is not meeting the minimum requirements. Plus, we look for unfair structures to the tournament such as unequal paths to win (one player can't play 3 rounds while most other players have to play 6 rounds).

greenoaks wrote:we have a limited amount of resources to make changes and many, many changes that could be made. pointing out that things are fine as they are is quite reasonable, and helpful to determine where those limited resources could be deployed.

There are a bunch of suggestions out there that will be much more beneficial than this update because they revolve around actually getting players into games: invites for speed games, rescinding wrongly-sent invitations, invitations upon game creation, and bulk game creation; are all examples of suggestions that are supposed to already be on the list.

P4Ssoa wrote:I agree, that's something to think about. But could requirements for joining not partially solve this problem?

Those same requirements for joining could actually be the cause of why the tournament is not meeting the minimum requirements. Plus, we look for unfair structures to the tournament such as unequal paths to win (one player can't play 3 rounds while most other players have to play 6 rounds).

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by this. Can you please explain? What do you mean by "the tournament is not meeting the minimum requirements"? And what do you mean by: you look for unfair structures to the tournament?You want to say tournaments like that are not allowed?I'm not sure if I don't understand it, because I know too little about tournaments, or maybe my english isn't good enough.

----There are always suggestions with a higher priority. I agree you posted some good examples. These suggestions should be implemented first.I just hoped to start a discussion in this topic with how we could improve tournaments. A long term project. I've posted my vision and I was hoping to get other people to post theirs aswel (, or discuss the ups and downs of mine.) It doesn't seem to work like that around here though.

Maybe in the end you are right greenoaks. 'The community' doesn't seem to give anything about improving tournaments.

P4Ssoa wrote:I agree, that's something to think about. But could requirements for joining not partially solve this problem?

Those same requirements for joining could actually be the cause of why the tournament is not meeting the minimum requirements. Plus, we look for unfair structures to the tournament such as unequal paths to win (one player can't play 3 rounds while most other players have to play 6 rounds).

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by this. Can you please explain? What do you mean by "the tournament is not meeting the minimum requirements"? And what do you mean by: you look for unfair structures to the tournament?You want to say tournaments like that are not allowed?I'm not sure if I don't understand it, because I know too little about tournaments, or maybe my english isn't good enough.

Every tournament must meet certain requirements: the eventual winner must play at least 3 games, all game settings used need to be included in the first post, there must be at least 16 players or 8 teams, tournaments can't be limited to the top players on the site, etc. And even if it meets all the requirements, we have to make sure that the structure doesn't unfairly allow one player a quicker/easier path to victory over everyone else. You may want to organize a tournament or two to understand what goes in to organizing before recommending how it should be changed.

I am organizing a tournament at this moment. This is why I started this topic in the first plays. I see a system that could be so much better.

All the things you mentioned could easily be solved. You just need to do some effort and brainstorm with me.

Instead of: Bad suggestion because we cannot check the tournaments if they meet the website rules.

You could've said:Something to think about: The tournaments should always be checked if they meet the CC rules before people are allowed to join. So before they go on the "join tournament" page, were players can see them, they should go to the tounrament staff for review. Only when the staff verifies them, they should turn up on the join tournament page.

You can look for flaws to put this idea to the ground, but you can also help to get rid of these flaws and make a brilliant system.

P4Ssoa wrote:I am organizing a tournament at this moment. This is why I started this topic in the first plays. I see a system that could be so much better.

All the things you mentioned could easily be solved. You just need to do some effort and brainstorm with me.

Instead of: Bad suggestion because we cannot check the tournaments if they meet the website rules.

You could've said:Something to think about: The tournaments should always be checked if they meet the CC rules before people are allowed to join. So before they go on the "join tournament" page, were players can see them, they should go to the tounrament staff for review. Only when the staff verifies them, they should turn up on the join tournament page.

You can look for flaws to put this idea to the ground, but you can also help to get rid of these flaws and make a brilliant system.

or you could run a few tournaments so we think you know what you are talking about. just a suggestion.

but don't worry, it's our fault. it's obvious the experience you've gained from running your one and only tournament allows you to take the commanding seat in a total ovehaul of a system that works so well for everyone else.

perhaps you could make it a little easier for the rest of us to back your changes by gaining some experience to support your opinion of this forum. but once again that's just a suggestion.

P4Ssoa wrote:I am organizing a tournament at this moment. This is why I started this topic in the first plays. I see a system that could be so much better.

All the things you mentioned could easily be solved. You just need to do some effort and brainstorm with me.

Instead of: Bad suggestion because we cannot check the tournaments if they meet the website rules.

You could've said:Something to think about: The tournaments should always be checked if they meet the CC rules before people are allowed to join. So before they go on the "join tournament" page, were players can see them, they should go to the tounrament staff for review. Only when the staff verifies them, they should turn up on the join tournament page.

You can look for flaws to put this idea to the ground, but you can also help to get rid of these flaws and make a brilliant system.

I disagree that your idea is a brilliant system though, even if the flaws are addressed.

The whole purpose of this topic was to discuss how we could make tournaments better. I'm not trying to do it all by myself. If it looks like this it may be because nobody else is doing any effort to suggest something themselves.I never said my suggestion was brilliant. I said litteraly "help to get rid of these flaws and make a brilliant system." That's asking everyone to put their thoughts into it. To work together to create a brilliant system.

I think the current system is amateuristic and unprofessional for a website like this. I know it can be better. I hoped to start a discussion on how we could make it better. If nobody wants this section to improve, better let the developers know they don't have to put any effort in it in the future.

Mod you can lock this topic and archive/delete it,I rest my case.

ps: Greenoaks, you're posts are a real waste of space. You say you've got kids, but it seems you need to grow up yourself.Maybe you should just stay out of this topic and do something usefull with your life, because the effort you've done by trying to take this suggestion down seems pretty pathetic to me.

P4Ssoa wrote:ps: Greenoaks, you're posts are a real waste of space. You say you've got kids, but it seems you need to grow up yourself.Maybe you should just stay out of this topic and do something usefull with your life, because the effort you've done by trying to take this suggestion down seems pretty pathetic to me.

resorting to personal attacks when someone doesn't agree with your awesomeness is not childish at all.

P4Ssoa wrote:I think the current system is amateuristic and unprofessional for a website like this. I know it can be better. I hoped to start a discussion on how we could make it better. If nobody wants this section to improve, better let the developers know they don't have to put any effort in it in the future.

All CC Tournaments are run by regular users, who are amateurs by definition. Making it look like something done by professionals isn't necessary because it's designed to be regular users putting on events for other regular users. The professional arm of CC Tournaments is the Conquer Cup.

And there are many people who want to improve CC Tournaments, which is why I mentioned some of the items that are already in the works. Just because we weren't fond of this idea doesn't mean we don't want improvements.